Paul,
3 balancing is worth 20pts*.
My read is that that is about right.
The task is hard but not TOO hard. The points are high but not TOO high.
What is it going to take to get 3 robots on that 88" bridge"
Assume robots fill the given space, with bumpers robots are roughly 44" by 34" give or take.
If enough teams go wide (34" up the bridge), then you have 6" hanging out over each side... ...seems doable.
BUT BUT BUT you say, that isn't how balancing works.
AND AND AND... ...of course you are right.
For those who didn't see or don't recall with a few notable excepts (cough cough 71, 308 and I think 1 or 2 others) the way to balance on the bridge was to:
- Get on the bridge (with goals in that case but it is the same idea),
- Slowly move up the bridge.
- Once the bridge (there was an automotive gyro in the kit that year some used, others just had drivers with skills) begins to tilt, move back X inches (3 or 6 I can't recall).
- The bridge continued up, rocked and stopped. Balanced
IMHO this does NOT need to be a coordinated effort. One robot can do the moving, all that is needed is to move the total bridge CG.
Let's say that we need 18 inches of travel to cover the high end of my memory.
Where do we get 18 inches?
It is hard but not impossible.
If we move the end robots out 9" each that would put them at 15" hanging over the edge. Again, this is hard but hardly impossible. Even if the robots do nothing to make themselves asymmetric so that their weight is exactly at their center, the robot centers are 2" from the edge.
And that give 18" for the balancing robot to move in the middle
So... ...this is hard but not impossible.
And unlike the hanging year where it took a ton of coordinated effort to make it safe and practical get these added points, I think this is essentially the same skill that successful teams will need to balance a Box of Rocks** on the Coopertition Bridge so the work is already half done.
For what it is worth.
Joe J.
*maybe more maybe less but let's assume that FIRST intended to make that 3rd robot worth A LOT so that teams would find it worth trying but not SO MUCH that the game was won automatically with that extra robot. It seems to me that they have done that. I talk with one group of 10+ year veteran and they tell me, it is a ghost, don't chase it. I talk with another and they tell me FIRST has made a game that is nothing but 3 robot balancing. They can't both be right.
** If Mike Bastoni didn't coin this phrase he certainly made it his own. FYI, Bastoni's back in the FIRST Game! Welcome back Plymouth North! FIRST Team #23. Hall of Famers if there ever were ones...